Imagining and Narrating Plague in the Ottoman World

Episode 396

with Orhan Pamuk and Nükhet Varlık

featuring A. Tunç Şen
presented by Sam Dolbee

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In this special episode, novelist Orhan Pamuk and historian Nükhet Varlık discuss how to write about plague and epidemics in Ottoman history. Orhan Pamuk is a Nobel Prize-winning novelist whose works such as My Name is Red drew masterfully on the literature and art of early modern Ottoman society. In an ongoing project, Pamuk is turning his attention towards the Ottoman experience of plague. Nükhet Varlık is a historian whose award-winning book Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600 was the first to systematically examine the history of the Black Death and subsequent plague outbreaks from the vantage point of the Ottoman state and its subjects. Varlık is currently involved in multidisciplinary collaborations with scientific researchers who are using new methods to solve longstanding mysteries about past plagues. In this wide-ranging conversation organized by Tunç Şen and the Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies at Columbia University and presented by Sam Dolbee, Pamuk, and Varlık discuss the Ottoman experience of plague from a variety of angles. Varlık describes how new research is overturning many misconceptions about the plague and its history, allowing writers of all varieties to re-imagine the Ottoman encounter with plague, and Pamuk discusses the challenges and opportunities presented by using fiction to address the very real experience of plague in past contexts. 

This podcast is based on a recording of a free public event entitled "Imagining & Narrating Plague in the Ottoman World: A Conversation with Orhan Pamuk & Nükhet Varlık" held on November 12, 2018 at Columbia University organized by A. Tunç Şen and The Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies. The event was sponsored by The Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies, The Columbia University School of the Arts, The Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and The Department of History at Columbia University.

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